Monday, March 13, 2017

Scruton discovers identity

Looking back over the events of 2016, liberal-minded commentators are apt to sound a warning against “populism,” a disorder that they observe everywhere on the right of the political spectrum. Populists are politicians who appeal directly to the people when they should be consulting the political process, and who are prepared to set aside procedures and legal niceties when the tide of public opinion flows in their favor. Like Donald Trump, populists can win elections. Like Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, they can disrupt the long-standing consensus of government. Or, like Nigel Farage and the Brexiteers in Britain, they can use the popular vote to overthrow all the expectations and predictions of the political class. But they have one thing in common, which is their preparedness to allow a voice to passions that are neither acknowledged nor mentioned in the course of normal politics. And for this reason, they are not democrats but demagogues—not politicians who guide and govern by appeal to arguments, but agitators who stir the unthinking feelings of the crowd....

The shocks and surprises of 2016 have made it imperative to understand what, if anything, is true in this charge, and just when, if at all, it is legitimate for politicians to appeal directly to the people, in ways that by-pass or marginalize the political process....

Scruton and others would have done better to listen earlier to the hard Right, perhaps, but now is no time for remonstrations. Scruton is listening now.

The answer is that democracies are held together by something stronger than politics. There is a “first person plural,” a pre-political loyalty, which causes neighbors who voted in opposing ways to treat each other as fellow citizens, for whom the government is not “mine” or “yours” but “ours,” whether or not we approve of it. Many are the flaws in this system of government, but one feature gives it an insuperable advantage over all others so far devised, which is that it makes those who exercise power accountable to those who did not vote for them. This kind of accountability is possible only if the electorate is bound together as a “we.” Only if this “we” is in place can the people trust the politicians to look after their interests....

But what happens when that trust disintegrates? In particular, what happens when the issues closest to people’s hearts are neither discussed nor mentioned by their representatives, and when these issues are precisely issues of identity—of “who we are” and “what unites us”?...

When Richard B. Spencer's central point, regarding identity, has reached the likes of Scruton, when Scruton is affording Spencer's point careful consideration, why, our side is making real progress.

Now, I do not know whether Scruton would affirm, if directly asked, that it is Spencer's point that Scruton considers. Scruton's admirable essay is not wholly free of liberal-conservative cant, so my guess is: probably not. Spencer is the vanguard, after all. Such is a vanguard's fate.

Still, you should read Scruton's whole piece as linked above. I recommend it.